A careful study of music albums of reggae artists reveals striking qualities of
good oratory. One equally witnesses the deployment of both classical,
traditional, and innovative rhetorical skills to the cause of the political
independence, economic advancement, and the restoration of the racial pride of
Black peoples the world over. Fontaine observes that such artistic
representation of the Negro's experience "unites the darker people of Africa
to those of America and to all everywhere in whom burns the unfulfilled wish
for freedom, equality, and dignity."[2] The
central concern of this paper is, thus, to outline the pan-Africanist concerns
of reggae music and analyse the patterns of its persuasive strategies. The
article explores the dual subject of the functionality of reggae music
as well as its aesthetics. We analyse a selection of these to unearth "... the
means and devices that a reggae musician and orator uses in order to achieve
the intellectual and emotional effects on an audience that will persuade them
to accede to his point of view."[3]

The pan-Africanist dimension of reggae music and its specific intellectual and
emotional appeal are largely explicable in the light of the African origins of
its Jamaican pioneers. Their historical experiences and social struggles are
reflected in the works of several of their musicians who see their musical
profession partly as the acceptance of a challenge to fulfil a duty which Bob
Marley describes as: "We free our people with music."[4] The themes and aesthetics which characterize its rhetoric
of resistance and Black reconstruction confer on reggae music a worldwide
attraction, especially among a cross-section of those who identify and
sympathize with the plight of the colonized, the disadvantaged and the racially
oppressed. And this is not surprising since in Jamaica reggae begun as a
reaction to British colonial rule. Its inclination towards the pan-Africanist
perspective of the Jamaican nationalist and pan-Africanist, Marcus Garvey is
its marked feature. Concerning the driving influence
behind reggae music, Stephen King has noted that:

Although Leonard Howell has been identified as the first Rastafarian
preacher in Jamaica, there were at least three other Rastafarian groups in
existence during the 1930s. While each group exemplified a different style of
worship and emphasized distinctive aspects of the Rastafarian "doctrine," there
were at least four overarching themes uniting these factions. First, all four
groups condemned Jamaica's colonial society. Second, all believed repatriation
to Africa was the key to overcoming oppression. Third, all of these early
groups advocated nonviolence. Finally, all four groups worshipped the divinity
of Haile Selassie.[5]

It is important to note that the continued predominance of these concerns in
reggae music is equally explained by the cardinal fact that: "...most serious
reggae artists adhered to some of the principles of the Rastafarian
movement."[6] The existence of racism and the
political domination of large parts of the Third World in general, and Africa
in particular, offered fertile grounds in which reggae music could widen its
audience, themes and subject matter beyond the confines of its cradle island
of Jamaica. By the middle of the 1960s many successful reggae artists had
acceded to international fame and pan-African notoriety. Its is said of Marley,
for instance, one of them that:

During his lifetime, Marley's music came to be closely associated with the
movement toward Black political independence, a movement prominent in several
African and South American countries at the time. His music has remained highly
popular, and for many it has continued to symbolize the hopes of the
downtrodden for a better life outside urban slums. The clarity, conviction, and
sincerity of Marley's performances, and his unique, melodic style of
songwriting have influenced many pop-music artists,[7]

This internationalization of reggae music was enhanced by the intensification
of the armed struggle for political independence in the Third World in general
and in Africa in particular. The pan-Africanist aspiration to independence had
been given more impetus by the accession to independence of many African
countries, with Ghana, Guinea and Mali adopting the red, yellow, and green
colours of the Ethiopian national flag and forming a political union in 1960.
Again, the mobilization of Black peoples against colonization and for their
unity was getting increasingly vibrant in the United States of America (USA)
where leaders of the Civil Rights campaign were emphasising the link between
Africa's drive for freedom and African-American's demand for civil rights. The
pan-Africanist dimensions of this phenomenon is evident in the connection often
made by its leaders between Africa's freedom movements and those of the Civil
Rights Movement in the USA. Martin Luther King Jr. for instance, noted on the eve of his
assassination in 1968 :

The masses of the people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today,
whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana;
New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee,
the cry is always the same: "We want to be free".[8]

Reggae musicians of Jamaica and elsewhere were more open to such advocacy and
identified with its programme not only because they were Black people but also
because they readily understood this phenomena in the context of the colonial
experience of Jamaica. This anti-colonial stance found expression in the names
adopted by reggae musical groups. They included Culture (possibly an
expression of Black identity and quest for independence), Black Uhuru
(literally translated "Black Freedom", Uhuru being the word for
"freedom" in Ki-Swahili, an East African language) and Burning Spear
(reference to a pre-colonial weapon; most probably an expression of a penchant
for the defence of the freedom and progress of Black people in their ardent
fight for political and economic liberation).

It is, therefore, not surprising that in reggae music race and common suffering
become the rallying focus of a pan-African anti-colonial agitation. This
explains why many reggae songs of the 60s and early 70s grounded their
exhortation on historical memories of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and
colonial exploitation of Africa. Songs by reggae groups, such as
Wailers,Burning Spear and Culture contained songs
entitled "Slave Driver", "Slavery Days" and "Pirate Days" respectively. It is
equally significant in this connection that four out of the eight songs that
constitute Peter Tosh's album, Equal Rights, deal directly with the
condemnation of colonialism and racial discrimination. They are: "Get up,
Stand up", "Downpressor man", "Equal Rights" and "Apartheid". Bob Marley
equally makes specific mention of the need to rid Africa of colonial domination
in songs such as "Zimbabwe", "Africa Unite" and "War" in the album entitled
Survival, while Confrontation ends with the song "Black man
Redemption." These militant songs of freedom, patriotism and Messianism have a
pan-Africanist dimension whose rhetorical content and subject matter must be
highlighted if the sources and motives of reggae music are to be appropriately
appreciated.

"Redemption Song", by Bob Marley, for instance, begins with the narrator's
account of a personal experience in which the persona is a victim of pirates
who kidnapped and imprisoned him in a "bottomless pit". It is followed by his
enslavement, continues with his eventual fortification by God and ends with
his redemption and triumphant living. This story acquires universal
significance in two stages: first, as the speaker turns to address the audience
to identify with his past misery and present triumph. Its rhetorical merit
resides largely in the appeal to the audience in the rhetorical question:
"Won't you hail to sing redemption songs?"[9] The
second is when the speaker, convinced that the proof of his argument is
self-evident, establishes a close bond between himself and the audience by
appealing directly to them to "emancipate yourselves from mental slavery". He
deepens the solidarity he seeks by introducing the second person plural of the
reflexive pronoun in the sentence "None but ourselves can free our minds." The
subsequent appeal for courage and commitment is given in the reassuring way
that neither "atomic energy" - the symbolic expression of the military might and
technology of the oppressor - can halt the advance of freedom. Then comes the
strategy of infesting the audience with a sense of guilt with the aim of having
their acquiescence and active adherence to the cause he advocates. This is also
stated in a rhetorical question: "How long shall they kill our prophets while
we stand aside and look?"[10] The speaker
concludes with a logical refutation of any potentially deterministic objection
to his opinion. By all these he implies that active dedication to the said
cause, rather than pristine apathetic nonchalance to his admonition, is the
right way to fulfill "the Book" of Prophecy.

In his bid to persuade, the speaker makes an accusation of inhumanity against
"pirates", projects himself as a victim-victor, invites the audience to
identify with and experience his joyous liberation under God. By so doing he
excites not only the feelings of enmity, pity, anger and disdain towards the
"pirates", but also that of hope, solidarity and the intellectual soundness of
his arguments in the minds of his audience.

The pan-African scope of another of Marley's song, "Buffalo Soldier", resides in
the vividness of this historical account of an African immigrant whose forced
labour built the American nation. It is basically the account of the plight of
the Negro in the New World. "Yes, he was stolen from Africa/Brought to
America/Fighting in arrival/Fighting for survival/Driven from the mainland/To
the heart of the Caribbean"[11]. Thus, the
"Dreadlocked Rasta" is a metaphorical buffalo and soldier captured and
exploited to build the American State. The mention of "Africa", "America",
"Jamaica" and the "Caribbean" reveals the story as an allegorical account of
Black people in their Diaspora in the New World. A legion of examples can be
drawn to illustrate this pattern of rhetoric characterized by an inventio
of accusation, a dispostio of symbolization and the universalization of
the particular. We see here a pattern which does not express only historical
sufferings of the Black race but also a statement of great hope in the Black
man's future.

This theme of Africa's past suffering and promising future is closely linked to
the "Back to Africa" advocacy. William Edward Burghurdt Dubois had noted that
"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line - the
relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in
America and the islands of the sea"[12].
Marcus Garvey, for his part, saw the solution to this problem as the return of
Africans to the continent from which they originated. His defence of this
project, which was later to find echoes in many a reggae song, in part went as
follows:

I appeal to the considerate and thoughtful conscience of white Americans not to
condemn the cry of the Universal Negro Improvement Association for a nation in
Africa for Negroes but to give us a chance to explain ourselves to the world...
No Negro, let him be American, European, West Indian or African, shall be truly
respected until the race as a whole has emancipated itself, through
self-achievement and progress, from universal prejudice. [13]

The advocacy of a literal return to Africa came to be championed in reggae
music. The songs "Exodus", "Marcus Garvey", and "Black starliner must come" by
Bob Marley and the Wailers,Burning Spear and Culture
respectively are indications of this. They all speak of the need to fulfil
the aspirations of all peoples of African descent by moving (metaphorically or
literally) to Africa, which is to all intents and purposes the bona fide
possession of the Black man. In their treatment of this theme reggae musicians
evoke the Biblical story of the Hebrews who returned to their homeland after
hundreds of years of enslavement in Egypt and decades of captivity in Babylon
and Assyria. This allusion serves as imagery that confers divine approval
and legitimacy on the whole programme of pan-Africanist revival. Reggae stars such
as Sugar Minott, Bunny Wailer and Bob Marley sing of this
pan-African return to the fatherland in their songs "River Jordan", "Fig tree"
and "Zion Train" respectively.

Bob Marley's song "Exodus" presents the theme of repatriation in a
particularly captivating manner. This is seen mainly by his specific reference
to Africa as the "Fatherland" of the Black man. He equally emphasises the need
to leave "Babylon", the place of captivity where Black people face segregation
rather than integration. This is why "... Leaving Babylon now" and "going to our
Father's land"[14] is presented as a
condition needed to "Drive away transgression /through equality" and to "set
the justice pace/ set the captives free"[15]. This evocation of a trans-Atlantic Negro bridge is akin
to Garvey's conviction that:

We, the Negroes in this Western Hemisphere are descendants of those Africans
who were enslaved and transported to these shores, where they suffered, bled
and died to make us what we are today - Civilized, Christian free men. Should
we not, therefore, turn our eyes towards Africa, our ancestral home and free it
from the thralldom of alien oppression and exploitation? [16]

The historical allusion to the experience of Hebrews in captivity in ancient times,
their Diaspora and eventual revival and Statehood in the middle of the
twentieth century confers a measure of sanctity on the pan-African movement. It
presents its eventual victory and progress as inevitable. Again, the use of the
rhetorical question: "Are you satisfied with the life you're living?"[17] is a direct appeal to the audience to lend
active support to the movement. The explicit indication of the destination,
urgency, time, and nature of the exodus makes this song a brilliant
transposition of Marcus Garvey's "Back to Africa" advocacy into a potent
aspiration of Black liberation and the affirmation of Negro identity. In the
light of these examples we cannot but agree with Cooper that: "Reggae music, like jazz
and blues, is a bridge of sound that ensures safe passage across the many
bodies of water that dis/connect African peoples dispersed across the
globe."[18]

This opinion concurs with the message of another of Marley's songs, "Zion
Train". The song implicitly admonishes Black people to get on board the "Zion
Train which is coming our way". The appeal is for the revival of Africa in
the manner of the Hebrews whose "Two thousand years of history/ Could not be
wiped out so easily."[19] In this song the
use of Biblical images and the train is intended to evoke pious devotion to the
cause and massive adherence of throngs as large as those to be transported by
Marcus Garvey's fleet of ships in the "Black Star Liner". The defense of Black
identity, values and unity, which Marley says should not be exchanged for the
values of the oppressor's culture, are indicated in the words: "Don't gain the
world and lose your soul/Life is worth more than silver and gold."[20] This feature of reggae music endorses the
idea that: "Social values may also inspire and guide the content of artistic
expression."[21]

The succinctness and poetic texture of these songs lend them a rhetorical
efficacy, especially when we consider, as Susanne Langer puts it, that: "In a
rhetorical... the writer's aim is to make the conclusion of the represented
argument look acceptable rather than to make the argument entirely visible."[22]

Again, the devotion among reggae musicians to revive the Black race to its
former glory is not just evoked in Messianic parallels to the Hebrew experience,
but also to the unearthing of Messianic ancestry of Black people. This desire
to infuse Black revival with messianic authorization has seen the exaltation of
Ethiopianism and the projection of the late Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie
I, to the status of at least a prophet. His pre-Imperial name, Ras Tafari
Makonnen, is the stem-word for the movement, "Rastafarianism" which is closely
associated with reggae musicians. Stephen King notes that: "When the Gleaner
published photos of Selassie's coronation, some Jamaicans consulted their
Bibles and subsequently believed Selassie was literally the "King of Kings,"
the Black Messiah."[23] A reference to
Emperor Haile Selassie I in reggae songs evokes notions of Black people as an
elect race. This development is reminiscent of earlier efforts by
pan-Africanists to trace their Christianity, not to post-Reformation European
evangelistic action or even to African Church Fathers such as St. Augustine,
Tertulian, Athanasuis, Monica and Cyprian, but to the ancient Christian
Kingdoms of Ethiopia and Egypt. Garvey, for instance, opined that:

We Negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God - God the
Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, the One God of all ages. That is
the God in whom we believe, but we shall worship Him through the spectacles of
Ethiopia. [24]

The immense reverence for the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I in reggae
music must be understood in the light of the said Biblical and Messianic
foundations of Ethiopianism. Menelik I, a son, of the Biblical King Solomon and
the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba (according to records of ancient Ethiopian
tradition the Kebra Nagast, "The Glory of Kings") becomes a source of
religious and racial link of identity. Thus, the glory attributed to the
Ethiopian Emperor Haile Sellassie I is further traced to the victory of Menelik
II, Emperor of Ethiopia, over invading Italian armies on March 1, 1896, at the
battle of Adowa. Being a grand nephew of the victor of Adowa, Emperor Haile
Selassie I attracted enough credit and respect equally on account of his own
resistance against Italian armies during World War II and his occupancy of the
ancient throne of Ethiopia. He was thus, a symbol of the Black messianic
"roots of David", the epitome and surety of the much desired victory of Black
armies over White during the African liberation wars, as well as a bulwark
and hope of Black unity. His visit to Jamaica in 1966, upon the invitation of
the Jamaican Government, further enhanced his admiration by reggae musicians.

In the song entitled "Jah Pretty Face", for instance, the group Culture
speaks of gentiles called by Natty Dread to "Come to look upon Jah pretty,
pretty face." One notes the Joy of the persona of the song as akin to that of
pilgrims admiring the "face" - a synecdoche expressing the person - of the
Emperor. "I and I are gone to see King Rastafari I/To look upon Jah pretty,
pretty face/.... Rasta are the roots of David/Haleluya/Shout it out."[25] runs part of the song. "War", a song by Bob
Marley, also projects this Black Emperor in that almost all the words of that
song are adopted from a speech by him. It is to him again that Marley refers
when he says: 'We uphold the teachings of his Majesty/Mr. Speaker/We no want no
devil philosophy/.../I know Jah never will let us down."[26]

Reggae musicians did not seem to favour the appeals to non-violent political
action advocated by the Rastafarianism to which they adhered. Several influences
explain their rejection of non-violence, or the preference for militant
rhetoric found in reggae music. These include the perceptions of Marcus Garvey
who had justified, if not sanctified, the use of violence as a viable political
method by Black people in these words:

When Lucifer challenged God's power in Heaven and marshalled his forces on the
plains of Paradise, the God we worship and adore also marshalled His forces...
And when anyone transgresses His power He goes to war in defence of His rights.
[27]

Another factor was the rise of armed struggle against European colonization of
the African continent. At the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress, for
instance, delegates had resolved that: "We are determined to be free, but if
the Western world is still determined to rule mankind by force, then Africa, as
a last resort, may have to appeal to force in the effort to achieve
freedom...."[28] This threat had
materialized by the late 1960s, and reggae music chanted its legitimacy in the
1970s and 80s. Themes of historic resistance to colonial military intrusion
served as a source of inspiration to reggae musicians' support of armed
struggle against colonialism and apartheid. The historic military struggle led
by Almamy Samori Touré against the French in nineteenth century West
Africa, for instance, is the subject of Alpha Blondy's song "Bori Samori".

The emancipatory and pan-Africanist dimension of reggae rhetoric was equally
enhanced by the militancy of the Civil Rights movement in the USA. Even the advocates of non-violence among its leaders, such as Martin
Luther King Jr., could not help framing his emancipatory rhetoric of
non-violence in metaphors of violence. For instance, he cautioned in 1963
thus: "There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is
granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake
the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges."[29]

Thus, when several reggae musicians, including Jimmy Cliff, toured Africa in
the late 1970s, the African liberation wars were in full gear, or had already
ended in African countries like Guinea Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique, Southern
Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Songs like "War" and "Apartheid" by Marley and Tosh
respectively are examples of reggae music that lauded the liberation war effort
in Africa. It is from this and other perspective that one can perceive the
general rhetorical import of popular reggae tropes. Phrases and expressions
such as "A Blackman Redemption", "Black Star Liner", "We love to fight for our
right", "The Babylon system is a vampire", or "Jah will mow down the concrete
jungle", "Downpressor man", "Jah's pretty, pretty face", "Them belly full but we
hungry", "Burning and looting", "Brothers have to fight against apartheid", are
expressions intended to attract and hold the social, political and economic
attention of a pan-African audience.

It is also worthy of note that in reggae performance this verbal or
linguistic aspect is buttressed by a gymnastic dimension in which the gestures
and steps of tiredness which accompany the narratives of the song symbolize the
resisting posture of the persona and a desire to break free from physical and
mental subjugation. The jumping, trotting, raised arms, and clenched fist of a
singer are thus the gymnastic overflow of a statement of Black identity and
equality. The aesthetic and the utilitarian thus merge to produce an oral
performance appropriate to the seriousness of the matter presented in the
message. The pan-Africanist import of this message makes it a performance in
which pan-African reggae artists reveal the: "rich and bitter depth of their
experience, the unknown treasures of their inner life, the strange rendering of
nature they have seen"[30]

The pan-Africanist dimensions of reggae music may be summed up by indicating that
whatever its mood - the recriminatory anger of Peter Tosh, the mystical outburst
of Culture and Burning Spear, the encomium of ancestral
and pre-colonial figures of Alpha Blondy, and the hopeful lamentation of Lucky
Dube - one notices a common factor of commitment to the African cause. We also
realize that the skills deployed to effect this are reminiscent of those
recommended by Cicero when he required of every effective orator:

... a thorough knowledge of literature, a grounding in philosophy, legal
expertise, a storehouse of history, the capacity to tie up an opponent and
reduce the jury to laughter, the ability to lay down general principles
applicable to the particular case, entertaining digressions, the power of
rousing the emotions of anger or pity, the faculty of directing his intellect
to the point immediately essential. [31]

The tones and skills become all the more remarkable, used as they are for the
worthy causes of anti-colonial freedom, racial equality and Black identity and
revival. These songs took the struggle of African revivalism from the arena of
political discourse to the masses of people in the discotheques and other
places of relaxation. In this sense reggae music can be said to be a
significant instrument in the pan-Africanist concern which Marcus Garvey
expressed in 1920 as follows:

We are the descendants of a suffering people; we are the descendants of a
people determined to suffer no longer. We shall organize the 400,000,000
Negroes of the world into a vast organization to plant the banner of freedom on
the great continent of Africa...If Europe is for the Europeans, then Africa
shall be for the Black people of the world. We say it, we mean it...[32]

Notes

[1] An Italian word meaning "Resurrection". The
liberation and unification of Italy from Austro-Hungarian Imperial rule in the
second half of the nineteenth century through the ideas and work of Mazzini,
Cavour, and Garibaldi is referred to as the Italian Risorgimento.

[8] Luther King Jr., Martin. A Call to
Conscience (or "I've Been to the Mountaintop"). Speech, April 03,
1968, Memphis Tennessee.

[9]
A rhetorical question is a sentence in the grammatical form of a question
which is not asked in order to request information or to invite a reply, but to
achieve an expressive force different from, and usually more effective than, a
direct assertion. (Abrahams, p.183).

[21] Harrison, Daphne A.. 'Aesthetic and
social Aspects of Music in African Ritual Settings' inJackson, Irene
V. (ed.). More Than Drumming: Essays on African and Afro-Latin American
Music and Musicians. London: Greenwood Press, 1985, p.51.

[32] Marcus Garvey. "Address to Delegates of
the NUIA on August 01, 1920, New York". Cited in Garvey, Amy Jacques.
Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey or "Africa for the Africans".
London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1988, p.34

Kwaku Asante-Darko currently lectures in African and European
Literature at the National University of Lesotho in Southern Africa.
After studying History, Literature, and French Language in Kumasi,
Ghana, where he was born some three decades ago, he proceeded for
further studies in French and International Relations at Universite
Stendhal and Universite Pierre Mendes France, both in Grenoble, France.
His current research interest is in the areas of race and literature, as
well as Pan-Africanism. Most recent publications include articles in Mots Pluriels No. 6, May 1998, and No. 8, October 1998. Arobase Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1998.Nordic Journal of African Studies. Vol 8 No. 1, 1999; Lesotho Journal of Law and Development. Vol. 10, 1999.